Please come this way, we need to carry out a more extensive search...

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After a long and somewhat eventful trip we have made it to Spain! It was all going well until we got to security. Obviously we have more luggage than you can imagine – only the kitchen sink is missing. In our defence most of it is Emily's, she has one big case and me and Tim have to share the other one. We loaded our mountains of bags and coats onto the belt and went through as normal. No beeping so we went to pick our stuff up.

At this point we were asked to wait whilst our pushchair and car seat were swabbed – all perfectly normal for items that can't be scanned. A few minutes later they said they'd need to re-do it as they'd had an unusual result. As we'd got the pushchair off Gum Tree only about a fortnight ago our first thoughts were that we'd picked a chair from a drug dealer! It was only when the second swab also came back with the same “unusual” reading and the head of security was summoned when we started to wonder what was going on.

Then the questioning started – where did we work, when did we get the chair, was there anything unusual about it, had we done anything to it since we'd got it – meanwhile our other luggage was being gathered together and a team of bag checkers were going through it.

The head of security then started talking about more thorough checks and that we'd have to go to the curtained off areas for an “enhanced search”. Tim obviously assumed the worst and with visions of rubber gloves in his mind was escorted off. Thankfully this wasn't what happened, indeed it was less of a search than you get in some airports as standard. During the process of the interviews we discovered that the problem was the pushchair had the same “chemical trace” on it as you get in home made bombs – in our case it was a mixture of Cif and contact adhesive which I had used to mend a tear. The friendly armed police officers who'd been summoned, cooed over Emily and let us on our way.

After that we didn't have much time to wait around – luckily Easyjet still let those with babies board early so we got good seats. Flight was OK, Emily was tired but couldn't sleep due to all the distractions so was a bit grumpy. When we picked her up and she could look around she was happier and the guy who sat behind us played peek-a-boo with her for a long time which she enjoyed.

Another slight annoyance was with the hire car. We booked through Holiday Autos and were surprised at how cheap it was clearly we should have been concerned at this point but we have used them loads of times before it always seems a cheaper way to get a hire car through Europacar or one of the other big agents.. When we followed the signs for hire cars our one was noticeable by its absence. After about 20 minutes of searching the terminal another couple from the flight said they had just found the representative of the company who'd pointed them around the corner for a bus which was going to take them to the hire car depot. We followed them after finding the rep but the bus had already gone. We waited another 20 minutes or so but no bus came – an English ex-pat phoned for us and a bus soon turned up. This wasn't ideal as we had loads of luggage and had to have Emily on our laps – she was so exhausted and fell asleep in our arms.

The actual hire car place was good – right on the motorway junction – really good brand new VW Golf Estate which has a very flashy on board computer and an annoying function which tells you which gear it would recommend! It also has a button labelled Tim. I am yet to find out what that does!

Roads were really good – big new motorway through the mountains followed by a twisty few kms at the end. We met our villa owners outside a bar and then followed them to the villa. We can now see why they insist on meeting rather than just giving a map as the track that takes you to the villa isn't one you'd follow to the end unless you were certain where you were going.

Villa is nice with a comfy sitting room, nice bedrooms, good kitchen, private pool and 3 big terraces. Unfortunately due to the hire car issues we were later than expected so our first meal consisted of rice with a stock cube and some of Emily's pitta bread! Followed by Liquorice Allsorts and some squashed birthday cake, washed down with a few thimblefuls of mineral water as the tap water is undrinkable!

Today was a relaxing day, all we did was go to the supermarket in town, a really good Dia, cheap too, and stock up before returning to take in the views and chill out.

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